Strike 3: While the baseball world remains wrapped up in an international World Series, the Colorado Rockies have been quietly going about doing something that’s no doubt very uncomfortable for them, largely because it’s so foreign. Looking outside the organization for a new head of on-field baseball operations hasn’t been done at 20th and Blake since Dan O’Dowd was hired away from the then-Cleveland Indians at the urging of then-team president Keli McGregor way back in September of 1999. Those were the early days of the Monfort regime.
It’s taken some boisterous fan backlash and some internal shoving from new team president Walker Monfort to finally get the organization moving into the 21st century. Colorado’s old way of doing things hasn’t worked (with a couple of notable exceptions) for most of this century, and while the game has changed and evolved, the Rockies simply haven’t. And it’s shown up in the standings, especially over the past seven seasons.
Fixing a team that’s lost more than 100 games three years in a row isn’t going to be easy, and it isn’t going to happen quickly. The Rockies are in desperate need of starting pitching, but won’t be able to do any kind of quick fix on that via free agency. Developing a pitching staff is going to take time and resources. Same goes for constructing an every-day lineup of hitters that don’t lead the league in collective strikeouts.
The new baseball guy is going to have to be patient and have a plan the organization can stick to. That will start with bringing in a lot of new coaches and instructors to get the current players on the same page.
Former Rockies pitcher Jason Hirsh has lived here and spent the past decade plus training young pitchers of almost all ages at his facility in south Denver. “Foundational Arm Strength Training” – or FAST for short – focuses on arm health and conditioning and helps young pitchers gain command of whatever they have, talent-wise. He works with a lot of high school, college and minor league pitchers from the area during the offseason. Hirsh was a member of the 2007 “Rocktober” World Series team, and has connections with Driveline and all of the latest arm training techniques, plus an understanding of pitching at high altitude. Putting him in charge of pitching development in the minor leagues would mean a consistent, relatable message being delivered system wide. That would be the first step in building a consistent flow of pitching talent to Coors Field.
Former Rockies utility man and current assistant hitting coach Jordan Pacheco gets the endorsement of former Rockies star Dante Bichette to take over as the team’s full-time hitting coach. Bichette says he and Pacheco have talked a lot about putting an emphasis on making solid contact with a more level swing rather than trying to lift everything, which results in high strikeout totals.
“The best thing about (Pacheco) to me,” Bichette said, “There’s a lot of guys that understand the mechanics and the analytics of it…there are so few guys that understand what it’s like to be in that box and be asked to deliver at the big league level. That’s a different thing, and he’s got that. He wasn’t the most talented, but he was a heck of a hitter.”
The new VP of Baseball Ops or GM or whatever his title is will have his hands very full from Day One. No doubt he will spend time analyzing the people – like Pacheco – already in the organization as well as those – like Hirsh – with a desire to join in. None of his decisions, including who the Manager will be moving forward, are going to be easy. An entire exhausted fan base has their fingers crossed that he makes good calls right off the bat.
